Blogs from Santiago Region, Chile, South America - page 6

This week, we became even more Chilean. And by that, I mean we attended our first Jane Chilean Fonda. "What is that" you say? Well it's basically a giant festival party filled with meat, meat, more meat, and Terremotos (yes, that means earthquake, but it also means way-too-sweet-cocktail-topped-with-ice-cream...weird yet amazing?). The girls had a great time at the Fonda, which also included endless amounts of bouncy castles, pony rides, carnival games, one-man-bands and Maelle's personal favourite: popcorn dipped in sand. To further our education about Chile, we also attended the girls' Fiestas Patrias school party and BBQ. Adorable choreographed dance numbers were witnessed (I didn't know "Baby Shark" is Chilean!?) and we also learned from Zoe that the national flower of Chile is the copihue (how does she remember this stuff?) It was really nice meeting ... read more

So Friday contained a bit of excitment, mostly because we are living in a bit of an empty house, with mostly rental furniture...but our air shipment arrived! Essentially with the expat assignment you get to take a few hundred pounds of your things, and throw them on an airplane which arrives much quicker than your ship shipment (shippy mcshiperson?), so that you have some ”crucial things” when you first get there - the ship shipment only arrives in a month. So it was nice to get a bunch or our things that we had said goodbye to about two weeks ago when the moving company had packed it up. And it’s amazing how much you forget what you threw on that airplane a few weeks back - I was cracking open boxes like it was Christmas! ... read more

After a complimentary Pisco sour at the hotel restaurant we slept until about 9:30 - very unusual for me. So it was up and about in quick order, after breakfast of course. First stop was the fanicular - or cable car - 300m up to San Cristobal hill where there is a very large statue of the Virgin Mary. The view was good if a bit hazy and there were heaps of people especially cyclists exploring the park. We headed back down and explored the Bellavista area, famous for it’s street art. There are lots of restaurants in the main part but we soon got down some side streets. Needless to say I took tonnes of photos and could have stayed there for hours. However with only one day in town we had no time to ... read more

If you look up culture shock, it supposedly goes in four stages. Honeymoon, frustration, adjustment and finally, acceptance. I was not sure how long it would take to get to frustration, but I can certainly say that we got there today. Perhaps frustration is not the word, or perhaps frustration and overwhelmed are the two words, that I am looking for and feeling right now. We got our house yesterday, which was supposed to be in move-in ready condition. One of the things that I suppose was overlooked was that there was no gas in the tank to heat the house/water (yes, it is heated by a tank). So not necessarily move-in condition, and something I suppose we should have asked more about...not that we did not know that that was the heating situation, but you ... read more

I am not sure what, or if anything, Chileans have against shorts, but the fact that it was 26 degrees today and most people were still wearing jeans or pants or maybe the occasional down jacket stood out to me. Perhaps I just have a thing about Chileans and shorts now since we went to the cross-cultural class and the facilitator said that you should always wear pants the first time you go to someone‘s house in Chile when they invite you. So now I am wondering if I just stored that in my head, and now I’m only noticing people here wearing pants, and not shorts, even though it’s 25 degrees and there isn’t any wind...like when you start talking about a certain car that you might be looking to buy, and then all of ... read more